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Mister Freeze
Dr. Victor Fries, through tragic circumstances, became known as the villain Mr. Freeze. History Victor Fries was one of GothCorp's most brilliant scientists and cryogenic researchers. When his wife Nora became infected with a deadly disease, he developed a special freezing cell and planned to cryogenically hold her until a cure was found. However, Fries had been misappropriating Gothcorp money, and the experiment was unauthorized. The experiment was interrupted by Gothcorp C.E.O. Ferris Boyle; A fight ensued and Fries grabbed a handgun, pointing it at Boyle and his security guards. Ferris Boyle calmly ordered Fries to drop the gun; reasoning that it is not his nature to resort to violence and that a possibility may exist for him to legitimately bankroll Nora's experiment. The smooth talk got to Fries, who relaxed and let down his guard, which gave the deceitful Boyle a chance to kick the scientist into a lab table full of beakers, which exploded. The resulting explosion smashed Fries into his cryogenic freezing tanks. The accident soaked Dr. Fries' entire body with the freezing solution and rendered him unable to survive outside of a sub-zero environment. He vowed revenge on those who had wronged him and created a vacuum tight suit which maintained his body temperature at 50 degrees below zero and tripled his strength. After building a laser-powered cold gun, "Mister Freeze" was born. When investigating the attack on Gothcorp, Batman disguised himself as a security guard to gain access to security reels. He saw the footage of Ferris lying to and assaulting Victor, and was disgusted by the despicable behavior of Boyle. Just then, Mr. Freeze corners Batman, who expresses sympathy for Nora. Unlike many villains, such as the Joker whom are despised by Batman, this is a rare case he actually feels for one of his enemies. Driven by hatred over the destruction of his life and maddened by his condition, Mr. Freeze sought revenge on those that had victimized him. He first attacked Boyle and Gothcorp, and though his plan was stopped by Batman, who managed to capture one of Mr. Freeze's underlings. Freeze intended to kill Boyle in revenge at a party where Ferris Boyle was due to earn the "Gotham Humanitarian of the Year" award, but Batman foiled it on account of Freeze putting innocent civilians in danger in his quest for vengeance. Freeze mananged to trap Boyle in an ice cake up to his waist when Batman tackled him and the fight ensued. Ironically, it was primarily Alfred who had defeated Freeze; as earlier Alfred noticed Bruce was unwell and gave him a vial of chicken soup, to which Batman used on a spur of the moment to crack Mr. Freeze's helmet, thus raising his body temperature and rendering him unconscious. The Dark Knight handed over the VHS security footage to the Gotham Police; presenting evidence that led to Boyle's arrest for his misdeeds. Fries was also arrested and placed into a sub-zero holding cell in Arkham Asylum. An unsuited Mr. Freeze is seen wearing a prison uniform and holding a snowglobe of a ballerina who resembled Nora, and crying to himself that he failed to save her, but hopes she is living peacefully in Heaven. This episode has often been cited among fans as one of the most humane and sad episodes of the series. Sometime later, entrepreneur and businessman Grant Walker discovered Nora's frozen (but living) body and used her as a bargaining chip to gain what Freeze had always seen as a curse: immortality. Freeze transformed Walker's cell structure to a frozen prison similar to Freeze's. Upon completion, Freeze betrayed Walker and destroyed the "Utopian" society he'd been building. Freeze then secluded himself in a self-made ice block, floating to colder waters until he finally settled in the Arctic. He stayed there with Nora, continuing to look for a cure. Unfortunately for Freeze and Nora, an exploration crew inadvertently crashed into Freeze's home. The containment was destroyed and the deadly disease to progressed into its fatal stages. After freezing the entire crew of the sub, Freeze headed to Gotham City with Nora, his surrogate son Koonak and his two polar bears Notchka and Shaka, to enlist the aid of head cryogenic researcher Gregory Belson, who had worked with Freeze prior to the accident. Though he was hesitant, Belson was eventually "persuaded" to aid Freeze. Together they found a way to cure Nora's disease, but it required an organ transplant. With no deceased donors available, they were forced to pursue a live one. The "donor" they chose was Barbara Gordon, and they proceeded to kidnap her. However, Dick Grayson was present during the kidnapping, and though he failed to save Barbara, he was aware of Freeze's plot. Batman and Robin managed to interrupt the operation before it took take place; the battle that ensued caused Freeze's lair to explode. Batman, Robin, and Barbara were able to evacuate Nora and Koonak in time, but Freeze had fallen into the fiery blast and was assumed dead. In actuality, he and his polar bears survived and, for a time, wandered the Arctic. In Gotham, Nora was cured and waited patiently for Victor to return, but he never made effort to contact her. In reality, the accident that had caused his "immortality" had actually deteriorated his body. Though his head was able to continue functioning, the rest of him withered away. He constructed an insect-like robotic carriage for his head, as well as a larger shell resembling his human form. Resigned that he would never again be united with his beloved Nora, a new layer of ice froze over Freeze's heart. Having lost that which was most precious to him, he resolved to stamp out warmth wherever it glowed. A newer, more powerful, and chillingly sardonic Mr. Freeze lost his obsession over his wife and instead concentrated on bringing misery to the people of Gotham and its protector Batman, aided by his Ice Maidens. However, Batman and Batgirl stopped the plan, and Freeze disappeared. At one point, Freeze's head was apprently acquired by a member of the Powers family and was locked in storage (as he is seen in Batman: Vengeance in a prison cell at the end, it's safe to assume that when the asylum moved to somewhere stronger, his head was given to Wayne Enterprises/WaynePowers for medical research). Forty years later, Derek Powers and Dr. Stephanie Lake transferred Fries's consciousness to a new cloned body built from his baseline DNA (as a test of an adequate subject who had systemically damaged DNA for Powers as Fries also had systemically damaged DNA like Powers). Subsequently, Fries' conscienceness was transferred into his new clone body. At first, the process seemed to work. When Fries and Lake visited the burial for his original body's disease-witten head, an assassin (who attempted to kill Victor out of venegence for his own murdered family that Mr. Freeze killed years ago) was thwarted by Batman II. Amazingly, Victor let the assassin go and promised to show he was a changed man. After an interview, his clone body's condition started to deteriorate. As result, Dr. Lake opted to terminate the experiment and Fries along with it by turning up the tempurature drastically in his sealed cubicle. When Fries realized what had happened, he escaped. Using a suit he knew in "cold storage", Mr. Freeze returned to exact revenge on those whom he felt wronged him (i.e. Powers and Lake). After a confrontation with Batman II and Blight, Fries was assumed dead. Powers and Abilities As a result of the accident, Freeze's normal body temperature leaves him able to withstand levels of cold ordinarily fatal to other humans. The reverse of this is an extreme vulnerability to heat. A side effect of Freeze's condition is that his body's natural aging process slowed completely. Freeze maintains his body's temperature with a cybernetic environmental suit that also triples his strength to superhuman levels and is heavily armored. Freeze's signature weapon is his "freeze gun," a ray gun that can create ice from airborne water vapor, or any nearby water source. Both the suit and gun are of Freeze's own invention, and he has developed several other pieces of technology that make him extremely dangerous. Revamp Much like the other characters of , Mr. Freeze underwent a stylistic change when the show transferred to . His changes were subtle, and the character's story was augmented with the introduction of his deteriorated body. Background Information * Mr. Freeze had been a rather poorly received, clownish "villain" from the old live action Batman television series and the DC Comics of the 1960s prior to . Paul Dini and Bruce Timm re-imagined the entire history and motivation of Mr. Freeze to produce a villain that could be taken as both a believable character and a deadly, serious threat. The creative team invented the character of the terminally ill Nora Fries to flesh out the backstory of a fully-realized tragic villain. It was the first complete overhaul of a pre-existing character in the DCAU, and to this day it is arguably the most successful. * The DCAU backstory on Mr. Freeze became so popular that it was used as the backstory in the Joel Shumacher film Batman & Robin (with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze), as well as the comics. However, the Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin was much more campy, as he used anything with the word freeze, ice, or cool in just about every sentence, having Nora hidden in an ice cream shop, and many more campy subjects, part of what made the film a critical disaster. * Mr. Freeze's original character design for the series was done by comic book artist Mike Mignola, recently of Hellboy fame. Interestingly, Freeze bears a marked resemblance to other Mignola characters, most notably Herman von Klempt, a mad Nazi scientist whose disembodied head is kept in a glass tank and is attached to a robotic body. There is also a similarity with Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head. * Freeze's history in DC comics was likewise retconned in keeping with the DCAU version. In the revamped comics, the young Victor Fries first developed an interest in science as a child, freezing insects and small animals in water to preserve them. Interestingly, this childlike obsession is shared by another of Mignola's characters, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, who experimented with cryonics and ways of re-animating the dead from an early age. * Mr. Freeze's appearance in the Batman Beyond-era was originally supposed to be a cameo where Bruce Wayne tells Terry to go to the fridge to get him a drink, to which Terry does so and finds Freeze's head staring right back at him when opening the fridge. However, the producers felt that Freeze deserved more than that to do his character justice, which resulted in the episode "Meltdown". * In the comic Batman: Gotham Adventures, Mr. Freeze is suspected of killing Ferris Boyle as well as Grant Walker. However, it turned out to be a robotic duplicate developed by Nora Fries' new husband Francis D'Anjou, who was frustrated that Nora still had affections for Victor Fries, whom he viewed as being a monster. By framing Freeze, D'Anjou tried to prove that he is completely irredeemable. At the end, Freeze is seemingly killed in a fight with the robot, and Nora leaves Francis looking for her husband. See also * DCAU Influences on Mainstream Comics Appearances * "Heart of Ice" * "Deep Freeze" Feature Film * Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero * "Cold Comfort" * "Gotham in Pink" * "Hear Me Roar" * "A Cat in the Hand" * "Cold Hands, Cold Heart" * "Meltdown" * "Disappearing Inque" * "The Last Resort" * "Epilogue" Other *Batman: Vengeance *Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu Category:Batman Beyond-era characters Category:Batman Beyond rogues Category:Batman rogues Fries, Victor Category:Metahumans